Update: I have updated the final boss of TFB HM for the strategy of tanking the boss on a lower platform. A lot of the concerns voiced below are less acute under this strategy. TFB HM is *still* a F/T-heavy operation, but not as bad as I had thought (the exact ratios are 63.32% / 29.29% / 7.38%). I have retained the full text below so that the ensuing discussion doesn't seem ridiculous.

 

I finally sat down and updated my tanking spreadsheet with the pre-mitigation damage numbers from TFB HM! Here you go:

 

• Numbers: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1679797/SWTOR/Defensive%20Stats.numbers
  
• Excel: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1679797/SWTOR/Defensive%20Stats.xls (bad export, not recommended!)
  
• PDF: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1679797/SWTOR/Defensive%20Stats.pdf
  

 

There is a lot of interesting tank comparisons in there, so it's worth looking at if you're curious as to how tanks are cross-balanced. It is worth noting that the Vanguard and Guardian numbers are a bit outdated, since the Shadow in question is now in partial-Dread Guard gear. Still, nearly correct.

 

In any case, I think the interesting thing here is to examine TFB HM itself and what it looks like in terms of DtPS. In a word: it's annoying. Here's the short summary:

 

• Writhing Horror is very definitely the gear-check for the instance, with a pre-mitigation DPS of 3277
  
• Operator IX is the closest thing to a pure mechanical fight in the game, with a pre-mitigation DPS of 1206 (post-mitigation: a paltry 239)
  
• Average pre-mitigation DPS: 2021 (compared to EC HM, which is 1859; and KP NM, which is 3991)
  
• Percentage of damage affected by defensive stats: 56.15% (compared to EC HM, which is 81.66%)
  

 

The increase from EC HM in pre-mitigation DPS is unsurprising. It's that last point that has me particularly demoralized: only 56% of TFB HM damage is subject to defense+shield. That's pretty brutal for a tank that is *heavily* dependent on shield/defense for overall mitigation. This puts TFB HM nearly into the same category as EV NM in terms of tank balance, which is not a good place to be.

 

To put into perspective exactly how bad this is, let's take a look at the comparative TFB HM survivability numbers for each of the three tanks (remember, the shadow in this case is better geared than either the vanguard or the guardian):

 

• Shadow: 67.6407%
  
• Guardian: 69.7825%
  
• Vanguard: 64.3672%
  

 

Poor vanguards... Basically, the problem here is that a significant chunk of damage in TFB HM is not only bypassing defensive stats, but also bypassing armor (e.g. Scream on TFB, Ciphas's bleed, Kel'sara's Discharge ability, etc). To put this sort of imbalance in perspective: the difference between 64% and 70% survivability for a vanguard is LITERALLY the difference between level 50 quest blues and augmented Campaign. That's the kind of disparity we're looking at here.

 

In any case, I didn't want to turn this post into "yet another balance rant". The numbers are there, and you can check them against your own combat logs if you like (should be accurate +/- 3%). Hopefully this will help a few tanks and raid groups out there make informed gearing decisions for their progression in TFB. At the very least, it seems clear that shadows/assassins need to start making liberal use of our combat stealth to re-gear mid-fight (e.g. swapping in DPS gear between phase 1 and 2 of TFB), since tanking gear doesn't really help through several long stretches of these fights.

Edited October 22, 2012 by KeyboardNinja

I'm curious why you would switch out of tank gear for phase 2 of The TFB considering tanking on the bottom platforms makes him use Monsterous Swipe which is a Melee Attack that does Kinetic Damage. As in, it gets the full benefit from all of your tanking stats.

 

There are only 3 other things a tank should be taking damage from during Phase 2:

Phasic Spittle: 1 or 2 hits of this when they jump to a higher platform to drop Phasic Spit Pool.

Scream: 5 or 6 hits all fight immediately followed by not having to tank so the healers have a huge amount of time to heal you up, making the damage negligible if you take the Scream at 75% health or above.

Hypergate Instability: Ticks from being on a platform with an Irregularity. Minimal damage and completely avoidable if your tanks don't help kill those.

 

Just from looking at our tanks logs from our 16-TFB HM kill this week I can see ~60% of their damage taken during Phases 2 and 3 was from Monsterous Swipe and ~40% from everything else. I can also see they're avoiding/absorbing ~78% of those Monsterous Swipes. It seems to me losing tanking stats at this point in the fight would massively increase the amount of damage you take from not avoiding/absorbing those hits.

Full HP build FTW!!

how is it literally the difference between blues and campaign augmented gear?

 

is ur ops group 5/5 yet?

Edited October 21, 2012 by Hatstandard

Suggesting that you should take off your tanking gear in the hardest content in the game while tanks already have enough trouble holding threat is the most hilarious form of ninja troling I've seen in a long time. Bravo, sir!

Suggesting that you should take off your tanking gear in the hardest content in the game while tanks already have enough trouble holding threat is the most hilarious form of ninja troling I've seen in a long time. Bravo, sir!

 

Clearly you don't know how tanking works...

 

I was unaware of the Monstrous Swipe mechanic. If it is in fact a melee attack, then it might be worth tanking him at a lower level rather than on the higher one. It also depends on exactly how much pre-mitigation damage that ability does.

 

To answer a previous question, we are 4/5 on HM TFB. (update: as of now, we're 5/5) Got within 1% a few times. It doesn't really matter though, since whether or not we have previously downed the boss has no effect on his DPS, which is what this post was about.

 

As for the "blues to campaign gear" difference, I was serious. If you put a vanguard in level 50 blues with optimized stats, they will have around 64% survivability. If you put them in mitigation-stacked, min-maxed Campaign gear with full augments, they will have around 69% survivability. That's basically the spread that we're seeing here between vanguards and guardians on TFB HM.

Edited October 22, 2012 by KeyboardNinja

Suggesting that you should take off your tanking gear in the hardest content in the game while tanks already have enough trouble holding threat is the most hilarious form of ninja troling I've seen in a long time. Bravo, sir!

 

Actually it's easier to hold threat in dps gear because your dps is higher and thus produces more threat.

 

The real issue here is that most tanks (as in, anyone who is not really really good) will struggle to stay alive in HM TfB if they're dps geared. Could they do it during certain phases? Certainly, a tank that switched to dps could help clear the anomaly's faster, but I know that I couldn't manage the switch and tank this fight.

 

The OPs suggestions are spot on, except swapping in dps gear would make sense if your tanks were some of the best in the game but would be a really bad idea for most guilds. I've actually seen some of the OPs fights, he's a VERY good player. So while this might be a viable strategy for him... this is a guy who freaking 2 manned HM LI's droid boss.

Edited October 21, 2012 by AshlaBoga

We have some trouble tanking him on the lower platforms to his left and right because dps need to regularly traverse those in order to get to tentacles and anomalies, so we end up tanking on the higher platforms.

 

I can say though as a tank I would much prefer to tank on those lower platforms, as there is a risk that an anomaly will spawn on the higher pillar the tank moves to in order to take a scream (leaving the spit on the previous platform). We had this happen once, but just put it down to bad RNG.

We have some trouble tanking him on the lower platforms to his left and right because dps need to regularly traverse those in order to get to tentacles and anomalies, so we end up tanking on the higher platforms.

 

I can say though as a tank I would much prefer to tank on those lower platforms, as there is a risk that an anomaly will spawn on the higher pillar the tank moves to in order to take a scream (leaving the spit on the previous platform). We had this happen once, but just put it down to bad RNG.

 

The general strat that i have seen usually has him tanked on the platforms where the tentacles normally would be for the next tentacle phase. Meaning that you start tanking where the 2nd tentacle will be, then you tank where the 1st one was when the 2nd is up. Then after spit you jump up to the far corners, to guarantee that no one will be jumping to that platform for what ever reason why being screamed at.

I was unaware of the Monstrous Swipe mechanic. If it is in fact a melee attack, then it might be worth tanking him at a lower level rather than on the higher one. It also depends on exactly how much pre-mitigation damage that ability does.

 

It is, in fact, a melee attack. Check your combat logs or look at our kills/attempts: http://www.torparse.com/g/691 & http://www.torparse.com/g/659

 

There are multiple ways you can tank and position during this fight to still be able to keep the tanks on the lower platforms. We do it one way, other ways have been suggested in this thread. The essential point is to never be tanking him for more than a hit or two on the top platforms because you'll go from avoiding 70% of his hits to avoiding 0% and the hits will be much harder up top.

Clearly you don't know how tanking works...

 

Even if I didn't, it doesn't matter. If people read your post trying to get legitimate help and they see you telling them to swap gear in the middle of an already overwhelmingly visually stimulating encounter while getting hit by the hardest content in the game, then the real culprit here is you.

 

Don't patronize people's intelligence because you think you have enough know-how to crunch some numbers instead of being with a group good enough to actually down the content. Player skill will always mean more than these numbers anyway; if you have the skill to get the gear, then what is the difference between 2-5% on a hit for a tank? If that small of a number ACTUALLY matters to your success, the problem is with the people you brought, not the gear on the tank.

Don't patronize people's intelligence because you think you have enough know-how to crunch some numbers instead of being with a group good enough to actually down the content. Player skill will always mean more than these numbers anyway; if you have the skill to get the gear, then what is the difference between 2-5% on a hit for a tank? If that small of a number ACTUALLY matters to your success, the problem is with the people you brought, not the gear on the tank.

 

I wasn't patronizing; I *do* swap gear between phases. Though, tanking him on the lower platforms is an undeniably superior strategy, and gear-swapping would not be a good idea in that case.

So how exactly are you swapping out your gear? Is this another thing that only stealth classes can do because they can get out of combat?

 

Thanks for posting this, definitely pretty interesting. I'm a PT tank and have full mitigation...perhaps I should up my health a little.

So how exactly are you swapping out your gear? Is this another thing that only stealth classes can do because they can get out of combat?

 

Yep, this is a stealth class only thing. I swap gear by dropping combat immediately as we're being pulled up for the second phase. I make sure that my inventory is open going into that phase, so I can just click through a large number of items very quickly.

 

It's worth noting that I *don't* swap gear between phases anymore, now that we have started tanking TFB on the lower platforms (where mitigation is effective).

 

Thanks for posting this, definitely pretty interesting. I'm a PT tank and have full mitigation...perhaps I should up my health a little.

 

Well, it's a balance, really. You don't want to go full paper-tank, but I think having more HP than a pure-mitigation tank is probably a good idea. I shoot for around 26k HP fully buffed and stimmed, but that's as a shadow. For a vanguard, I would probably go easily 1k-1.5k lower than that, since vanguards have vastly superior armor and they derive no survivability benefit from extra HP (whereas a shadow improves their self-heal).

Ok good points. Do you factor in the parts of the fights where a tank isn't taking direct damage from a boss into your numbers (when another tank has the boss, or on Operator IX where there is no boss)? This could drastically affect boss 1, 3, 4 and 5's damage taken over time numbers if you weren't.

Ok good points. Do you factor in the parts of the fights where a tank isn't taking direct damage from a boss into your numbers (when another tank has the boss, or on Operator IX where there is no boss)? This could drastically affect boss 1, 3, 4 and 5's damage taken over time numbers if you weren't.

 

I do. My methodology is basically to compute the raw, pre-mitigation damage of a single hit of each ability, then scale that by the number of hits divided by the total time of the fight. Thus, it is a *strictly* normalized model, where all damage is considered smooth and static. This means (among other things) that I really can't accurately measure the value of things like activated relics or cooldowns. The advantage is that mean survivability (which is what I was interested in calculating) is much easier to express.

I'm curious why you would switch out of tank gear for phase 2 of The TFB considering tanking on the bottom platforms makes him use Monsterous Swipe which is a Melee Attack that does Kinetic Damage. As in, it gets the full benefit from all of your tanking stats.

 

It's funny because I just watched the video I did from our 2nd kill several times (am shadow tank btw) and I take *exactly* the same dmg whether am in a lower platform with his tail kick or in an upper one with his purple spit *and* I have yet to loose a single charge on my kinetic ward, meaning I don't shield any of his attacks : tail kick or purple spit...

The only difference in numbers I get is from the commando healer buff, thus the mitigation I have seems to only be either resistance or armor, or both. 8 man HM btw. I mean I take either 8k or 9k hits depending on the commando healer buff, nothing that looks like a shielded/absorb difference...

 

Saying this because I remember a video on YouTube with the guy explaining both attacks (upper and lower) are in fact the same in dmg result, just a different animation.

 

Not saying you're wrong, just saying it's odd because I can't explain why with 1/3 def chance and 2/3 shield chance, roughly, I didn't get to mitigate a single of his attacks, again whether on a lower or upper platform...

 

If there's something I'm missing, please do tell me...

 

EDIT : I think I know the answer, by watching your video from your website it seems your tanks are on a platform where they take "arm" attacks, whereas I take a "tail" attack even when on a lower platform, it may well be that only the "arm" attack can be defended against, whereas both the "tail" and "spit" attacks can't ?

 

Thus it looks like it's not so much a matter of upper vs lower and more of arm vs tail or spit...

Edited October 23, 2012 by Shoogli

The tail whip and the spit are indeed both F/T attacks. The tail whip actually hits harder (by about 2k), but otherwise it's pretty much the same. What you want to do is tank the boss *between* the two platforms where the tentacles spawn on either side. Each tank swap is exactly 35 seconds apart (from Scream to Scream), which means that Slime comes exactly 25 seconds after the swap. You can run a timer for this, but it's pretty easy to time out manually by watching your rotation. When slime is coming, move back to an upper platform. You'll take one or two spits, but the important thing is to drop the slime on the top platform so that you can tank the boss on the lower platform after the next swap. Edited October 23, 2012 by KeyboardNinja

The tail whip and the spit are indeed both F/T attacks. The tail whip actually hits harder (by about 2k), but otherwise it's pretty much the same. What you want to do is tank the boss *between* the two platforms where the tentacles spawn on either side. Each tank swap is exactly 35 seconds apart (from Scream to Scream), which means that Slime comes exactly 25 seconds after the swap. You can run a timer for this, but it's pretty easy to time out manually by watching your rotating. When slime is coming, move back to an upper platform. You'll take one or two spits, but the important thing is to drop the slime on the top platform so that you can tank the boss on the lower platform after the next swap.

 

Are you certain the arm attacks can by mitigated? I never paid much attention but last night clearing up storymode I noticed I was being hit for 4.5k by both the spit and the normal attack. And yeah I try to do exactly what you suggest with the tanking him on his sides (between the 2 tentacle spawn points) and jumping back a couple of seconds before I 'expect' a spit.

 

Nice to know the timing, I can plan that a bit better now, but I was taking the same amount of damage on both the upper and lower platform. However this was SM, so maybe it's different in HM. Worth confirming though.

The tail whip and the spit are indeed both F/T attacks.

 

Thanks for confirming it !

 

The tail whip actually hits harder (by about 2k), but otherwise it's pretty much the same.

 

On our second kill yesterday evening, and I've watched the video several times (I was the one frapsing), I'm taking the same amount from the tail and the spit. Only difference sometimes (and I think it's the healer buff dropping once in a while) is less than 1k, and does happen on both tail and spit. On my first phase of being tail-kicked am taking most of the time 8703 hits and a few times 9161 ones (platform 15).

 

And then on my second phase, when being spitted at (platform 8), I get most of the times hit for 8703 as well, and one time for like 8900ish but it's blurred on the video (red is still a mystery to video he he...), then a sequence of 9300ish with a 9800ish once (platform 8 spit as well but later during the fight) so I can't tell really why there is this difference, maybe the commando healer buff, maybe the sage one, can't tell, but the difference isn't 2k for me, it's around 600-700 at most...

When in doubt, use your combat logs.

 

Powertech Tank on our TFB kill this week: http://www.torparse.com/a/33495/9

Assassin Tank on our TFB kill this week: http://www.torparse.com/a/33492/9

 

Click on "Damage Taken" or "Log" and just look for Monsterous Swipe. That is the melee ability The TFB uses if you tank on the proper lower platforms. That attack can be shielded and avoided. If there is another ability he uses that looks like a melee ability but isn't, I haven't seen it so I can't help you there.

We tank him up top so our healers will have something to do! They tend to zzz mid-fight if we don't keep 'em busy.

Here is a link to my parse from last Tuesday's 16-man Hard Mode run: http://www.torparse.com/a/36213

 

I tank from platform 9, when the spit comes, I drop to 15, run back to 1 to clear my debuff, then go back to 9. By the time I get back to 9, it's time for me to taunt again, so I tank at 9 until the green pool goes away on 15, and when the green pool goes away, I hop back up to 15 and tank there again until the next spit. Rinse repeat until final burn phase when I move down to platform 9 for the final burn.

 

*NOTE: Platform numbers are based off of this map: http://i.imgur.com/XnkOy.jpg*

 

I see that based on my total damage taken vs. both of your tanks' damage taken, I took roughly 200k more damage than the 2 of you over the course of the fight, but I also had substantially more absorbed damage. It's important to note that I'm a guardian, so our classes are different.

 

I'll try to get our vanguard to post his logs from last week to see how they compare to your powertech logs. If I'm not mistaken, he tanks almost exclusively on platform 2.

 

Our main reasoning behind tanking much of the time on platforms 2 and 15 is that it gives the DPS more freedom to move around without the worry of getting smacked by being on a tank platform. We have no problems clearing the content at all.

What is void disturbance? Internal damage that both of you guys took that I did not take any of.

http://www.torparse.com/a/36224 is the log of the Vanguard from the same fight. I tank on platform 2, using platform 3 when necessary and platform 11 only when 2 has a Phasic Spit Pool and 3 has an Anomaly. Consequently, I take no hits from Monsterous Swipe, and considerably more from Phasic Spittle. This contributes to considerably more damage over the course of the fight, but in a very predictable fashion which our healers aren't having any trouble managing.

 

I had a bit of a chat from our heal crew during this week's Operation, and they have assured me that tank damage isn't a concern for them during P2 and that I don't need to do anything to mitigate damage taken. While it runs counter to my instincts, the simple truth is that predictable damage on a tank - even when it's high - is preferable when it allows the DPS certainty in positioning and healthy freedom of movement. And really, that's true throughout TFB, and the basic problem that I'm having with this thread. Incoming damage on the tank simply isn't enough to be concerned in this Operation, and there's precious little reason to mitigate it. Our heal squad is doing well, our tanks are taking the damage and handling positioning, and our DPS are free to pew pew. When that stops working, I'll be happy to start considering alternatives to reduce incoming damage.